Former School Committee member Rego, business partner buy Rock St. courthouse

A former high-profile School Committee member and a city chiropractor bought the vacant Bristol County District Court building at 45 Rock Street for $100,100 from the county earlier this month and will open it as a medical and information technology school, for rentals and other purposes, including the arts.

A former high-profile School Committee member and a city chiropractor bought the vacant Bristol County District Court building at 45 Rock Street for $100,100 from the county earlier this month and will open it as a medical and information technology school, for rentals and other purposes, including the arts.

“In another 10 days we plan to be open,” Wayne Rego said Thursday, while giving a tour of intensive refurbishing, cleaning and utilities work going on in the two connected courthouse buildings at 45 Rock St.

Bedrock Building LLC took ownership of the former courthouse on Aug. 3 from the Bristol County Board of Commissioners, officials said.

According to the Secretary of State Corporations Division, Rego is listed as resident agent and David Fall as manager.

Rego had been a School Committee member for nine terms and its vice chairman, and was openly contemplating a run for mayor in 2005, when it became public that a series of trips to the Azores were funded by taxpayers, forcing him to resign that year.

He paid off $5,254 for inappropriate expenses, and as a result of that publicity, travel expenses for school board and city council members were eliminated.

Rego had said the trips were to recruit Portuguese-speaking teachers and develop an exchange program, but later said the expenses should not have been fully paid as a School Committee benefit.

He taught GED classes at the county jail for a decade and was an administrator for eight years when Roger Williams University had a professional development center in Fall River.

Rego and Fall plan to move their South Coast Center for Professional Development, which opened in 2008 in Fall River, into newly configured classrooms where the court clerks, parole and administration were set up since that portion of the building was built in 1979. The older portion on Rock Street — including the massive and majestic main courtroom — was built in 1908.

Rego said their small, adult education, year-round program, which includes Microsoft and medical training, usually has 50 to 120 students, although there are now 17 as they transition from Pleasant Street quarters.

Five classrooms were being retrofitted on the first floor, and Rego said they have leases with “about four” tenants, including lawyers, on the second floor and another tenant in the older section.

He said they’re aiming to use the older part of the building, which has special touches like copper and oak doors, trim and windows, as a performing and visual arts center.

Almost exactly two years after District Court moved operations to the Fall River Justice Center on South Main Street, the two-story brick building, on one acre at Rock and Bedford streets, and consisting of 42,000 square feet with nearly 50 parking spaces, is reopening.

Page 2 of 2 - The building was put out to bid twice last winter, with only two bidders responding: the Rego-Fall partners and one from Benjamin Burbank and David and Kevin Ryan, who bought the former Durfee Tech property last year.

Burbank and the Ryans, as The 45 Rock St. LLC, bid $10,000, listing use of the buildings as a restaurant and a musical performance school.

The sale was another government property sold at a fraction of its assessed value in a poor economy.

“We felt both those groups had good community-type proposals,” County Commissioner John Mitchell said, agreeing the contrasting bid amounts was a big factor.

He said Rego, with his school aimed at building job skills and careers, brought “an existing business and a track record, and both (bidders) had an arts component to it” within the created Arts Overlay District.

Mitchell said that while the building appraisal was much higher, they looked at low prices schools and other old commercial properties brought, and limited uses of a courthouse.

City assessment records value the property at $1.4 million, of which about $230,000 was for the one-acre site, which is in a struggling area just north of Government Center.

“In light of looking at the availability of real estate,” Commissioner Paul Kitchen said, “I think we’re pleased. I think it’s a good use of the facility.”

Board Chairwoman Maria Lopes concurred and said the bid amounts affected their decision.

Mayor Will Flanagan also gave a positive assessment. He said he commended the commissioners for not letting a key vacant building languish. “I believe it’s a positive addition to the city and downtown,” Flanagan said.

He also said Rego told him he might be interested in buying the adjacent vacant and environmentally questionable police station next door at 162 Bedford St. Flanagan said that vacant building was targeted for assessment funds awarded Friday under a federal Brownsfields grant.